


Project Necramech

by Echovous



Category: Warframe
Genre: Amputation, Body Horror, Body Modification, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Pre-Canon, Pre-Infested Deimos, Science Experiments, Unethical Experimentation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:28:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26515237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Echovous/pseuds/Echovous
Summary: Clariv, a psychologist, has been accepted onto the team of a military project on Deimos.Here, she will discover the horrifying process that goes into new weaponry for the Origin System’s defense.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Project Necramech

**Author's Note:**

> I’m really loving the Necramechs so far, though it’s a shame we don’t really have too much info on them.
> 
> This is just something I came up with while fishing/mining. Y’know, normal space ninja stuff. 
> 
> Enjoy!

_Late Orokin Era..._

Her mother hadn’t been too happy when she’d applied for a position on Deimos. Even less so when she’d been accepted.

“Clariv, dear...” Her mother was sitting across from her. 

They were at some Martian restaurant, some place she’d forgotten the name of.

“We’re at war with the Sentients. Shouldn’t you be trying to get _further_ from potential targets?”

Clariv met her mother’s eyes. “Deimos needs a psychologist for their ‘Necramech’ project.”

“Why does it have to be you?”

She sighed. “I want to be a part of this war effort.”

“In a war zone?”

“Where will I find a better opportunity?”

— —

Two hours later she was on Deimos. 

She’d taken a shuttle from Mars’ surface and was dropped off just outside a large Orokin complex. It was huge, easily stretching across the landscape and into the sky. Tall windows lined the white and gold walls, bleeding a haunting blue light into the surrounding darkness. 

“Dr. Olsen?” There was a woman in a pristine lab coat running down the stairs to meet her, her glowing eyes another light source in the dark.

“Y-Yeah, that’s me,” she called out, meeting the woman at the bottom of the stairs. “You can call me ‘Clariv,’ I’m not too professional.”

“Alright, Clariv, I’m Dr. Fo Absentina. I’m here to welcome you to Deimos! Follow me, let’s get you out of the dark.”

Dr. Absentina turned to start walking up the stairs and Clariv followed.

“So, what made you choose us?” Dr. Absentina asked.

She shrugged. “I mean, there’s really no downsides to this—speaking as someone who wants to be a part of the war effort. The real question is ‘what made you choose me?’”

Absentina chuckled. “We had a lot of reasons, but we mostly chose you because of your age and perceived ambition. ‘Project Necramech’ is an ambitious project. It needs someone like you.”

Clariv couldn’t help but smile like a dork at that. It felt good being appreciated, at least in some way. 

“I’ll give you a tour of the complex. You’ll want to know where everything is,” Absentina continued once they reached the top.

Clariv began to follow Absentina through the gate but froze on the spot. There was a large object in the shadows of the complex: a single towering, black and gold, war machine standing watch. Beneath all of that metal she could see part of a face, which only made her shiver. _Someone was inside that?_ Clariv looked closer at the bulky suit of armor, trying to figure out how someone could fit. There was room for the torso but not the limbs. _Maybe they were just really flexible?_

“That’s a Necramech,” Absentina returned to her side. “You’re not going to have to worry about them, they’re our soldiers.”

“Y-Yeah. Of course not,” she broke eye contact with the large mech and tried to shake away her fears, but couldn’t. 

Absentina noticed this and lowered her voice. “Hey, don’t worry about it. Most recruits are terrified of the Necramechs, but there’s nothing to fear. Now, should we get on with that tour?”

“Yes,” she managed to even out her shaking voice and continue to follow Absentina. 

Inside the complex there was a tall, dark-skinned man dressed in golden Orokin armor. Although only a fifth the size of the Necramech outside, she found him twice as imposing.

“Is that the woman we just hired?” The man asked urgently. “I need to speak to her right now.”

“Woah, General Brazen. Can I at least give her a tour first?” Absentina smiled.

The General frowned. “Dr. Absentina, I need to speak with her. It’s _very_ important to the project as a whole.”

She flicked a hand at him. “No, no. Tour first. Come on, Clariv, let’s go.”

Clariv hesitantly followed, giving the General a glance over her shoulder before she committed to following Absentina. Still, it gave her a bad feeling. 

“Don’t worry about him,” the other woman glanced at the General, too. “Everything’s important to Brazen. Even the little things. We’ll get back to him after the tour.”

She was led further into the complex. Eventually, the broad hallways narrowed and doors seemed to be packed into every free space.

“You’ll probably figure out soon why we need you on board,” Absentina said as they walked. “Project Necramech deals much with the mind.”

“So are you a psychologist, too?” Clariv asked.

“No, not really.” Absentina admitted with a shrug. “I’m an engineer for the ‘mechs, though all of my designs take the brain and neural network into account.” She waved her to follow. “After I show you the training segment, I can show you my designs. This way!”

The woman made a sharp turn and Clariv had to contort her body to keep up. 

“Soldiers go through a mandatory 100 hour training period followed by 10 hours of studying what it they’ll be expected,” Absentina rambled off her usual script. “This part is where we get 10% of dropouts.”

“That’s pretty low,” she commented.

Absentina smiled. “No one really comes to Deimos unless they’re serious.” She turned to the wall beside them and activated the panel with her ID card. 

The door slid open and they walked into a huge gym. There were over a hundred men and women standing in line, performing an exercise over and over again that had to be incredibly painful.

She glanced at Absentina. “You said this only resulted in 10% of dropouts?”

“Usually, yeah.” Absentina nodded. 

“What about the other 90%?” Clariv asked. She couldn’t really imagine how 100 hours of training could be so tame in comparison to other requirements.

“The other 90% is usually lost in the ‘mental training’ stage,” Absentina answered. “There’s a huge requirement! Our soldiers literally have to retrain certain areas of their brains to control other functions!”

“Neuroplasticity.”

“Is that the word for it?” Absentina asked. 

“Yeah. Although I’m curious as to how you achieve it on a notable scale...”

Her eyes caught on a group of four men and three women standing in an open room. Each had someone walking around them, measuring different parts of their body. _Interesting._

She continued. “Neuroplasticity happens naturally. Irrelevant nerves die and are replaced, but to _retrain_ large areas, those matching body parts would have to be—“

This time she cut herself off as she spotted a man being rolled in a wheelchair. _He was missing his arms and legs..._

“Clariv, are you okay?”

“I’m...” she let go of Absentina’s arm, not realizing she’d grabbed it in shock. “You’re amputating limbs?!”

Some heads turned when she raised her voice, but Clariv was too overwhelmed to notice.

“That’s how we get more space in our soliders’ brains,” Absentina said. “It’s also where we get 89% of dropouts.”

“N-No kidding...” She glanced at the man in the chair as he was wheeled past them. 

_This was so extreme... Maybe that was why she was hired... She was young and just out of school. She hadn’t yet had the career experience to tell when something was severely unethical._

“...We’ve got half a dozen consent forms,” Absentina was still talking when she refocused. “All potential recruits are aware of the end product.”

She looked at her, still feeling sick. “What happens if the amputation doesn’t work? What if...”

“That’s why you’re here,” Absentina smiled. “We need a little more polish on the neural pathways.”

“Dr. Olsen.”

There were footsteps behind her. She turned to see the large general walking towards her. 

“Brazen,” Absentina faked a whine. “We’re still on tour!”

Brazen ignored her. “Dr. Olsen, I need you to see something. Follow me.”

She followed the large man, feeling a bit relieved to be getting out of the ‘training’ center. General Brazen led her into a dim room lit up by the various screens. 

“This map,” The General pointed to the central screen before walking her up to it. 

Clariv squinted at the many symbols throughout the map. “What is it?” 

“All Necramechs on Deimos,” he said. 

“Each blue dot represents one that’s active while the red dots represent downed mech we need to recover,” Absentina added as she squeezed in beside them. “Don’t worry, I don’t assume you know everything about a map you’ve just seen.”

The General frowned but continued. “Look at the red dots. Notice anything weird about them?”

“Um...” she leaned forward, squinting harder at the dots. It was hard to focus on them all at once, but when looking at one at a time, she quickly realized. “They’re moving!”

“And they’ve moved locations several times,” Brazen nodded.

Clariv stared harder at the screen, somehow less phased by offline mechs that were moving now that she’d seen someone willingly get all four limbs amputated...

“Maybe it was dragged by something?” She suggested. 

The General shook his head. “It’s too far for that. Too irregular, too.”

She looked back at the screen, struggling to find an explanation. “What if the tracker is screwed up?”

“Not possible. We’ve had Necramechs with damaged trackers and none has showed up like this.“

“Then...” She thought aloud. “Consciousness somehow lives on in the Necramechs...”

Behind her, General Brazen and Dr. Absentina shared a look.

“The same consciousness?” Brazen was the first to speak. “Would we be able to reclaim these ‘dead’ soldiers?”

Clariv shook her head. “I don’t think so. It’s just... Well, it seems impossible. Maybe it’s a different consciousness?”

 _Or maybe it’s because parts of the brain meant for controlling human limbs were now being taught how to control Necramech limbs... Maybe the trained neural net stays with the Necramech..._ Oh, what had she gotten herself into?

“So the consciousness is just like... some weird Void thing?” Absentina asked.

She nodded. “I’m not exactly sure. The only thing I know is that...”

“We’ve got a thousand zombie soldiers on Deimos?” The General asked. 

She shook her head. “I think of it more like autonomous newcomers we should befriend as soon as possible...”

“Ooh...” Absentina grinned. “Could we possibly reprogram them?”

_Because of course that was the next step..._

The General looked to her. “That might be an idea.”

Clariv frowned. “Just remember that they’re most likely _autonomous._ Anything we do to them they will remember...”

“I understand that, Dr. Olsen,” the General said before turning back to Absentina. “What would need to happen for you to be able to reprogram one?” 

“Well, first you’d need to lure one in. We do a systems scan, then I’m pretty much in.”

Clariv opened her mouth to speak but found no place for her to interject in their plans. She had to just nod along with them, accepting what they had to say in a way that just felt wrong... 

— —

The captured Necramech was tightly restrained to the examination table. Dr. Absentina was deep in its code, examining every single pairing as the machine struggled to online its forcibly-offlined weapons.

Clariv was in the room, too. Though she could only look into the decaying corpse held in the Necramech’s casing. Her eyes traced up the gold patterns on the black casing, watching the Void energy swirl throughout it. She wondered how consciousness could possibly exist in such a form...

Wondered how all of this would be their downfall.


End file.
